Dave Kohn, driver trainer for the Boulder Valley School District, checks out emergency lighting on a school bus Friday morning at the BVSD Boulder Terminal as part of an almost 160-point inspection process that each driver performs on each bus daily before the vehicle goes out on its route.

In an effort to keep students safe, officials with the St. Vrain Valley, Boulder Valley and Thompson school districts ensure that any driver who works on a mountain route receives extra training.

School bus drivers also are subject to random drug tests.

But those precautions didn’t prevent a Dec. 7 accident when a St. Vrain Valley School District bus driver overturned her bus with eight kids inside on a winding, steep stretch of Colorado 7.

Five children were injured, and the driver, 39-year-old Elizabeth Burris, is charged with DUI and multiple counts of vehicular assault and child abuse. Burris, who is on paid administrative leave from the school district, is out on bond and did not respond to a request for comment.

The Colorado State Patrol said Burris told police at Longmont United Hospital that she was “on about six prescription medications” at the time of the crash. She failed a sobriety test administered by a state trooper.

All potential school bus drivers must take a pre-employment drug test and are subject to random testing while they are employed, said St. Vrain spokesman Damon Brown. He wouldn’t say if Burris had any random drug tests or how many kids she picked up on her route.

Boulder Valley School District spokesman Briggs Gamblin said transportation supervisors are provided “reasonable suspicion training” and can pull drivers from “safety sensitive positions and randomly test” in certain situations.

“Drivers are required to check in for their shift at dispatch,” Gamblin said. “Any concern regarding safety of the driver is reported immediately to a supervisor, and that driver’s shift is covered.”

Thompson School District spokesman Michael Hausmann said a driver will be tested if he or she is ticketed in an accident when someone requires medical treatment away from the scene, if any vehicle is towed or if there is a fatality.

TSD chief operations officer Dan Maas said any collisions, even minor ones, involving district buses are reported to police and a full internal investigation is conducted.

“It’s pretty intense,” Maas said. “You just clip a mirror, and now you have a committee that looks at it. We take it very seriously.”

Maas said that TSD has had seven accidents in the last five years, adding that five involved injuries and the bus drivers were at fault in three of the accidents.

“Keep in mind we dispatch over 70 buses out on the roads twice a day, not counting field trips,” he said.

BVSD did not have a list of accidents available. Longmont police records indicate that between 2013 and 2015, police responded to 35 traffic crashes involving school buses, two with injuries. This year, police have responded to 13 crashes and cited bus drivers in eight instances.

Because of the way Longmont police track information has changed, they could find only 57 public property crashes involving school buses between 2005 and 2012, but an official said the number might be slightly underreported.

The State Patrol directed a query about the number of bus crashes involving St. Vrain drivers to the school district. Weld and Boulder County sheriff’s offices responded to requests, but numbers were not available on Friday afternoon.

St. Vrain officials said a list of crashes would not be available until Monday.

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